THE LAND OF PROMISE; Or, My Impressions of Australia.
London: Sikpkin, Marshall, & Co., Stationer's Court. 1854. First Edition (& 1st printing). Octavo, original black cloth, front and rear panels decorated in blind, spine panel ruled in blind and lettered in gilt. xii, 343 pp. black & white frontispiece, Appendix. This copy is EXTRA ILLUSTRATED with three inserted engraved plates, one mounted as a frontispiece ("SHALL WE GO, OR SHALL WE NOT: They had come from Liverpool, and having been seized with the general infection, had deserted their ships to pay a visit to the diggings"); another at p. 89 ("THE NEWLY-ARRIVED: There were others more artful, who began at a distance, and came gradually around to their point with the sly fox-like ingenuety of a long-practised examining counsel") and the third at p. 234 ("OUR TENT AT FOREST CREEK: The spot we chose for this was not far from the abandoned hole in which we proposed to work"). The plates are likely from another book but are certainly scenes from the Australian Gold Fields. Front free endpaper lacking, light foxing, mild bubling and marks to the cloth; a sound, clean, very good copy. Uncommon in the original cloth. Item #313906
¶ First person account of life in Australia in the 1840's,including a chapter on the discovery of gold in Australia in 1846. Shaw also wrote GOLDEN DREAMS AND WAKING REALITIES (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1851), in which he describes his voyage from Australia to the California Gold Rush in 1849, the reality of the mines and his return to Australia via Hawai'i and Samoa.
Price (CAD): $225.00